The Ask and the Answer (27 page)

272

I grab at the mud to stop myself but there's nothing to hold on to and I drop right in with a
splat.

"Gah!" I shout and try to stand. I'm up to my thighs in lime-covered Spackle shit, splattered all up my front and back, the stink of it making me retch-

And I see another flash of Noise.

Of me standing in the bog.

Of a Spackle standing right over me.

I look up.

There's a wall of Spackle staring.

And right in front of 'em all. 1017.

Above me.

With a huge stone in his hands.

He don't say nothing, just stands there with the stone, more'n big enough to do a lot of harm if thrown right.

"Yeah?" I say up to him.

"That's what you want, ain't it?"

He just stares back.

I don't see the Noise again.

I reach up for my rifle, slowly.

"What's it gonna be?" I ask and he can see in my Noise just how ready I am, how ready I am to fight him. How ready I am to-- I've got the rifle stock in my hand now. But he's just staring at me.

And then he tosses the rock down on the ground and turns back toward the tarpaulin. I watch him go, five steps, then ten, and my body relaxes a bit.

It's when I'm pulling myself outta the bog that I hear it.

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The click. His rude click.

And
I
lose it.

I'm running toward him and I'm yelling but I don't know what I'm saying and Davy's turning round in shock as I reach the shelter of the tarpaulin just after 1017 and I'm running in with the rifle up above my head like I'm some stupid madman and 1017's turning to me but I don't give him a chance to do nothing and I knock him hard in the face with the butt of the rifle and he falls back on the ground and I lift the rifle again and bring it down and he raises his hands to protect himself and I hit him again and again and again--

In the hands-

And the face--

And in those skinny ribs--

And my Noise is raging-

And I hit--

And I'm screaming-

I'm screaming out--

"WHY DID YOU LEAVE?"

"WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?"

And I hear the cold, crisp
snick
of his arm breaking.

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***

It fills the air, louder than the rain or the wind, turning my stomach upside down, making a thick lump in my throat. I stop, midswing.

Davy's staring at me, his mouth open.

All the Spackle are edging back, terrified.

And from the ground, 1017 is looking back up at me, red blood pouring from his weird nose and the corner of his too-high eyes but there's no sound coming from him, no Noise, no thoughts, no clicks, no nothing-

(and we're in the campsite and there's a dead Spackle on the ground and Viola's looking so scared and she's backing away from me and there's blood everywhere and I've done it again I've done it again and why did you go oh jesus dammit Viola why did you
leave--)

And 1017 just looks at me.

And I swear to God, it's a look of triumph.

275

23 SOMETHING'S COMING

***

(V iola)

"WATER PUMP'S workin agin, Hildy."

"Thank you, Wilf." I hand him a tray of bread, the heat still coming off it. "Could you take these to Jane, please? She's setting the tables for breakfast."

He takes the tray, a flat little tune coming from his Noise. As he leaves the kitchen shack, I hear him call out, "Wife!"

"Why does he call you Hildy?" Lee says, appearing at the back door with a basket of flour he just pounded. He's wearing a sleeveless shirt and the skin up to his elbows is dusty white.

I look at his bare arms for a second and look away quickly.

Mistress Coyle put us to work together since he can't go back to New Prentisstown anymore either. No, I will certainly
not
forgive her.

"Hildy was the name of someone who helped us," i say. "Someone worth being called after."

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"And by
us, you
mean-"

"Me and Todd, yes." I take the basket of flour from him and thump it down heavily on the table.

There's a silence, as there always seems to be when Todd's name comes up.

"No one's seen him, Viola," Lee says gently. "But they mostly go in at night so that doesn't-"

"She wouldn't tell me even if she did." I start separating the flour into bowls. "She thinks he's dead."

Lee shifts from foot to foot. "But you say different."

I look at him. He smiles and I can't help but smile back. "And you believe me, do you?"

He shrugs. "Wilf believes you. And you'd be surprised how far the word of Wilf goes around here."

"No." I look out the window to where Wilf disappeared. "No, actually I wouldn't."

That day passes like the others and still we cook. That's our new employment, Lee and me, cooking. All of it, for the entire camp. We've learned how to make bread from a starting point of
wheat,
not even flour. We've learned how to skin squirrels, de-shell turtles, and gut fish. We've learned how much base you need for soup to feed a hundred. We've learned how to peel potatoes and pears faster than possibly anyone on this whole stupid planet.

Mistress Coyle swears this is how wars are won.

"This isn't really why I signed up," Lee says, pulling another handful of feathers off the sixteenth forest fowl of the afternoon.

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"At least signing up was your idea," I say, fingers cramping on my own fowl. The feathers hover in the air like a swarm of sticky flies, catching everywhere they touch. I've got little green puffs under my fingernails, in the crooks of my elbows, glopped in the corner of my eyes.

I know this because Lee's got them all over his face, too, all through his long golden hair and in the matching golden hair on his forearms.

I feel my face flush again and pull out a furious rip of feathers.

A day turned into two, turned into three, turned into a week, turned into the week after and the week after that, cooking with Lee, washing up with Lee, sitting out three days of solid rain stuck in this shack with Lee.

And still. And
still.

Something's coming, something's being prepared for, no one's telling me anything. And I'm still stuck
here.

Lee tosses a plucked fowl onto the table and picks up another one. "We're going to make this species extinct if we're not careful."

"It's the only thing Magnus can shoot," I say. "Everything else is too fast."

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"Because
you
stoked the oven too hot!"

"I'm not made for cooking," he says, smiling. "I'm made for soldiering."

I gasp. "And you think
I'm
made for cooking-"

But he's laughing and keeps laughing even when I throw a handful of wet feathers at him, smacking him straight on the eye. "Ow," he says, wiping it away. "You got some aim, Viola. We really need to get a gun in your hands."

I turn my face quickly back down to the millionth fowl in my lap.

"Or maybe not," he says, more quietly. "Have you-?" I stop. "Have I what?"

I lick my lips, which is a mistake because then I have to spit out a mouthful of feathery puffs, so when I do finally say it, it comes out more exasperated than I meant. "Have you ever shot someone?"

"No." He sits up straighter. "Have you?"

I shake my head and see him relax, which makes me immediately say, "But I've
been
shot."

He sits back up. "No way!"

I say it before I mean to, before I even know it's coming, and then I'm saying it and I realize I've never said it, not out loud, not to myself, not ever, not since it happened, and yet here it is, tumbling out in a room full of floating feathers.

"And I've stabbed someone." I stop plucking. "To death."

My body feels suddenly twice as heavy in the silence that follows.

When I start to cry, Lee just hands me a kitchen towel and lets me, not crowding me or saying anything stupid or even

279

asking about it, though he must be dying of curiosity. He just lets me cry.

Which is exactly right.

"Yes, but we're gaining sympathy," Lee says near the end of dinner with Wilf and Jane. I'm putting off finishing because as soon as I do, we have go back to the kitchens to start preparing the yeasts to cook
tomorrow's
bread. You wouldn't believe how much bloody bread a hundred people can eat.

I take half of my last bite. "I'm just saying there aren't very many of you."

"Of
us,"
Lee says, looking at me seriously. "And we've got spies working throughout the city and people join us when they can. Things are only getting worse there. They're rationing
food
now and no one's getting the cure anymore. They're going to have to start turning against him."

"And so many in prisons," Jane adds. "Hundreds of women, all locked up, all chained together underground, starving and dying by the dozen."

"Wife!" Wilf snaps.

"Ah'm only sayin what Ah heard!"

"Yoo din't hear nothin of the sort."

Jane looks sullen. "Don't mean it's not true."

"There are a lot of people who'd support us in prison, though," Lee says. "And so that might turn out-"

He stops.

"What?" I ask, looking up. "Turn out what?" He doesn't answer me, just looks over to another table where Mistress Coyle is sitting with Mistresses Braithwaite,

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Forth, Waggoner, Barker, and Thea, too, like they always do, discussing things, whispering in low voices, devising secret orders for other people to carry out.

"Nothing," Lee says, seeing Mistress Coyle stand and come toward us.

"I'm going to need the cart hitched up for tonight, Wilf, please," she says, approaching our table.

"Yes, Mistress," he says, getting to his feet.

"Eat a little longer," she says, stopping him. "This isn't forced labor."

"Ah'm happy to do it," Wilf says, brushing off his trousers and leaving us.

"Who are you blowing up tonight?" I ask.

Mistress Coyle pulls her lips tight. "I think that's enough for now, Viola."

"I want to come," I say. "If you're going back into the city tonight, I want to come with you."

"Patience, my girl," she says. "You'll have your day."

"Which day?" I ask as she walks off.
"When?"

"Patience," she says again.

But she says it impatiently.

It gets dark earlier and earlier every day. I sit outside on a pile of rocks as night falls, watching tonight's mission-takers head on out to the carts, their bags packed with secret things. Some of the men have Noise now, taking reduced amounts of cure from our own dwindling supply stashed in the cave. They take enough to blend in with the city but not enough to give anything away. It's a tricky balance, and it's getting more

281

and more dangerous for our men to be on city streets, but still they go.

And as the people of New Prentisstown sleep tonight, they'll be stolen from and bombed, all in the name of what's right.

"Hey," Lee says, hardly more than a shadow in the twilight as he sits down next to me. "Hey," I say back. "You okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Yeah." He picks up a stone and tosses it into the night. "Why wouldn't you be?"

Stars start to appear in the sky. My ships are up there somewhere. People who might've been able to help us, no, who
would
have helped us if I could've contacted them. Simone Watkin and Bradley Tench, good people,
smart
people who would have stopped all this stupidity and the explosions and-

I feel my throat clench again.

"You really killed someone," Lee says, tossing another stone.

"Yeah," I say, pulling my knees up to my chest.

Lee waits a moment. "With Todd?"